Word: opium
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...might sound like good news that so much opium has disappeared from the world drug market, but Costa believes the missing opium is a potential time bomb, and many law-enforcement officials agree. That's because the Taliban is believed to be "stockpiling to control the prices," says a spokesman for Britain's Serious Organized Crime Agency, who confirmed that NATO forces have uncovered Taliban stockpiles of opium. Despite the bumper opium harvests, the street price of heroin remains a costly $67 per g in European cities, and the price Afghan farmers charge for their opium has remained about...
...Taliban grow no opium themselves but earn millions by levying a 10% tithe on farmers. Since heroin use is dropping steadily in the West, the value of opium is diminishing - that's why officials are especially alarmed by the Taliban's stockpiles. "Who would have reasons to hold on to a devalued stock? People who have mischief in mind," says Costa. He believes that the Taliban is saving the opium for lean times. He says the hundreds of Afghans working for the U.N. drug office in southern Afghanistan have recently found notices posted by the Taliban advising farmers...
...Taliban could also be stockpiling drugs in preparation for a possible onslaught on Afghanistan's drug lords. NATO defense ministers agreed at a summit in Budapest this month to use their soldiers in Afghanistan for the first time to attack opium laboratories and smuggling convoys, rather than simply destroy opium crops...
...According to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, between 6,000 and 8,000 tons of opium have vanished during the past three years somewhere between the poppy fields of Afghanistan - which produce about 93% of the world's opium - and the world market. That's enough to supply all the world's heroin addicts for nearly two years. The whereabouts of the missing opium is a mystery so far, but international drug- and law-enforcement agencies say they believe the Taliban has begun to stockpile large quantities of the drug, which is worth about...
...estimate of what is missing is based on simple arithmetic and market economics. The world consumes a steady 4,500 tons or so of opium a year, almost all of which comes from poppies grown in Afghanistan, where the crop earns about $1 billion a year for farmers, by U.N. estimates. Yet Afghan farmers have harvested far above world demand in recent years; last year's harvest was a record 8,200 tons and this year's crop dipped only slightly to about 7,700 tons, in part because the global food crisis sent the price of wheat rocketing, persuading...